


up all night

by michi_thekiller



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Gen, His Last Vow Spoilers, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michi_thekiller/pseuds/michi_thekiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the longest eleven hours of John Watson’s life. </p><p>Takes place during His Last Vow.  (The missing scene, in the hospital, where John waits by Sherlock’s bedside.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	up all night

_**22:16** _

They don’t let him into the O.R. even though he is a doctor and a qualified surgeon and John knows that they can’t, it’s not the way things are done and they think he will be too emotional, as if John doesn’t know what it’s like to operate while steeped in the blood of his friends, as if he has never held Chris’s intestines in his hands, as if he’s never tied a tourniquet around Lindsay’s amputated arm, or he can’t perform a needle decompression while Raul gasps for air and bleeds out from the bullet that’s pierced his chest. They think he will be too emotional, even though he’s been calm and cool and completely collected with the traces of red still in the creases of his palms and underneath his fingernails from where he held direct pressure to the wound on Sherlock’s chest with both hands while he spoke to him, coached him, (“Sherlock, can you hear me? You’re going to be okay, you have to be okay, it’s okay.”) in the bloody six minutes - Jesus, _six minutes_ \- of eternity that it took the ambulance to arrive while Sherlock’s blood seeped through his fingers and Sherlock’s blood is still in the lifelines of his hands.

They don’t let him into the O.R.

So John paces in the waiting room, thinking about surgery, isolating the area and locating the bullet, thinking about Sherlock intubated and hoping - oh god - they don’t crack his chest, don’t even think about that, trying not to look at the clock, why are they taking so long.

There are so many structures involved in thoracic injury, and John considers them all, thinking about Sherlock’s chest wall, his lung and pleura; his tracheobronchial system - his esophagus, his diaphragm, all those thoracic blood vessels; his liver, the hepatic portal vein, the inferior vena cava - oh how those solid organs love to bleed - and, of course, Sherlock’s heart and mediastinal structures.

He paces around the waiting room, thinking about Sherlock’s heart.

__

_**22:30** _

Surgery can take hours, John reminds himself. It can take hours.

 

**_22:35_ **

Surgery can take hours.

__

_**22:45** _

He overfills the plastic cup at the water cooler and water spills over his hands and onto the bottom leg of his trousers.

“Shit!” John curses. “Fuck. Fuck. _Fucking hell!_ ”

 

_**22:58** _

“Excuse me,” he asks the receptionist. “Is that clock broken?”

“No, sir,” she replies, without looking up. Her hospital ID says Catie, with a C.

“Oh,” says John. “Okay.”

“Why don’t you relax and have a seat?” suggests Catie-with-a-C.

“Yeah,” says John. “Yeah, okay.”

 

_**23:00** _

Time of death: 23 hundred hours.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Just stop.

 

_**23:05** _

What is the bloody point of having a telly in the waiting room if there isn’t even a remote?

 

_**23:10** _

There is a woman here whose husband had a heart attack at dinner (Sherlock would be able to say what it was), and now he is getting an angioplasty. She has her children with her, a boy and a girl. They’re far too young. They don’t even know what’s going on.

 

_**23: 18** _

There is a girl here, maybe 18 - if that, whose boyfriend was in a car accident. She won’t stop sobbing. Great, big, broken sobs that turn her face red and make her gasp and choke on air. “I….I told him he wasn’t safe to drive,” she wails, to no one in particular. “I should have stopped him. I should have been with him!”

Survivor’s guilt.

John wants to tell her that it’s not her fault. It’s no one’s fault. And part of him wants to go over and shake her, shake her and tell her to shut up just _shut up_.

He of course does neither.

 

_**23:39** _

The surgeon comes out at last, at _last_ and John knows right away. The look on her face isn’t the one that makes John’s heart drop, it isn’t the one he knows all too well when you must give bad news, because John knows all the signs of that, has been in that position himself, but she actually looks him in the eye, and he goes over and he gives her a great big hug before she can even finish saying the word “success” and John is whispering “Thank God, oh thank God, thank _God_ ,” over and over even though he isn’t a religious man.

 

_**00:00** _

Sherlock is moved into the ICU.

“Visiting hours are over,” they remind John at the nurse’s station. “Normally we don’t allow anyone in here overnight.” The charge nurse eyes John sceptically. “Unless you’re family.”

“Yes,” John says quickly.

“I mean, not really,” John amends, feeling the need to be honest. “But please.” He is a proud man, but he is not beyond begging. “He’s my…” he swallows. “He’s my best friend. Please.”

“All right,” says the nurse, whose hospital ID reads Jean-Louis. “Just make sure you keep quiet all right?”

 

 _ **00:15**_  

The E.D. is a 24-hour creature, lights bright and fluorescent all night, filled with the hustle and bustle of the living organisms it houses; nurses and doctors, orderlies and security; the glowing red **EMERGENCY** sign outside like a neon beacon advertising: Yes, We’re Open!

The ICU is something else. Quieter, like the rest of the hospital at night. It shuts down into a sleeplike state, the lights dimmed, monitors set to Alarm Only so the nurses and doctors won’t be annoyed by the constant beeping.

This is where the trauma room patients go, if they have made it through the trauma.

In one empty room the harsh _buzz buzz buzz_ of an alarm is going off, disconnected from its patient an hour ago but still trying to find signs of life. Every now and then there’s a pinging and flashing screen from the set of monitors at the nurse’s station as the patients’ vital signs fluctuate to dangerous levels.

Sherlock looks pale and sallow against the white hospital sheets, in the low yellowish light. It’s jarring. Has he lost weight?

John thinks he could circle Sherlock’s wrist with his fingers, if he tried.

 

_**00:20** _

There was a whole month where they didn’t see each other. 30 days. That _is_ ages.

30 days. A whole month.

 

_**00:25** _

Don’t look for track marks.

 

_**00:26** _

Don’t look at the track marks.

 

_**01:00** _

Now there is nothing to do but wait.

 

_**01:01** _

**HR:** 88  
 **BP:** 156/80  
 **SpO2:** 98%

 

_**01:05** _

John gets up and walks around the room, once, and then again, and then five more times.

Hospital rooms are not very large.

 

_**01:17** _

“Please, Sherlock,” John says. He’s not going to say the rest of the phrase. Those words don’t belong in this room. _Don’t be…_

No.

Sherlock is going to make it.

 

_**01: 20** _

Sherlock should have waited for him. He never waited for him. He always ran ahead, expecting John to follow. If he’d waited he might never have gotten shot, if he’d waited John might have shot them first, he knew that John always carried his gun, but then again, John, like the great bloody idiot he was, never expected Sherlock to get shot.

And then who shot Sherlock?

 

_**01:32** _

Mary! Oh God, Mary. She must be so worried. She hasn’t been answering her phone. He’d left her a voicemail a couple of hours ago.

> _Oh God, Mary, it’s Sherlock, he’s been shot. Don’t worry about me, I’m okay. We’re at the Royal London Hospital. Call me as soon as you get this._

John pulls out his phone. 5% battery. No texts or missed calls. He should call her. He should tell her that the operation was successful, and that he is going to stay the night in the ICU with Sherlock.

He looks back at Sherlock’s unconscious form. Watches the rise and fall of his chest. He’ll have to step outside if he wants to make a call. RR 16 times a minute. HR: 76.

She should know where he is. She’s a clever girl.

BP: 148/86. SpO2: 99%.

She might worry, though.

He looks back at his phone. 4% battery remaining.

“I won’t be a minute. Don’t you dare wake up while I’m out.”

 

_**01:43**_

 

> _Hullo! You’ve reached the phone of Mary Watson. Yes, it is Watson now, thank you. I’m probably dealing with something messy at the moment, but be a dear and leave a message, won’t you? I’ll give you a ring as quick as I can! Bye now!_

Beep. John opens his mouth to tell Mary not to worry, Sherlock will be all right, everything will be all right, but none of it comes out.

> _If you would like to record your message again, press 1. If you are satisfied with your message --_

“The surgery was successful. I think I’m going to be all right,” John says quickly, which is not what he wanted to say at all.

 

_**01:45** _

Sherlock hasn’t woken up.

“Typical,” John says. “The only time you actually do what I say is when you’re unconscious.”

 

_**02:00** _

Sherlock is going to wake up at any moment now. He’s going to laugh at the look on John’s face, because this, too, is all a trick. And John will laugh too, because he actually believed it, and he’d gotten so worried all for no reason. Sherlock always got him so easily; they’d laugh together about that.

Sherlock is going to wake up any moment now.

 

_**02:30** _

The hospital has only seven channels, and nothing good is on any of them.

 

_**02:38** _

In this episode of Antiques Roadshow a man is getting very excited about the sexy lady in the painting.

 

_**02:45** _

“Wake up, Sherlock. Stop playing.”

 

__

_**03:00** _

“Come on, Sherlock, you cock,” John says. “You heard me last time, you bastard.”

 

 

_**03:01** _

In this episode of EastEnders Carol has some difficult choices to make when she realises there are changes on the horizon.

John has seen it already.

 

_**03:16** _

“Please, Sherlock. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to ask you nicely? Please.”

He really needs some water. His throat is parched and it cracks on that last word, _please._

 

_**03:30** _

Someone once said that 3 am is the loneliest hour. Or is it 4 am? Right now, at 3:30, you could split the difference.

The darkest time of night, with hours to go before sunrise, where one could almost think that the sun will never rise. When even the city outside falls quiet, save for the occasional cab or ambulance rolling down an empty street. Now is the time when people lie in bed, with their strange thoughts and regrets cradled tightly to their chests.

Right now is the loneliest hour.

 

_**03: 45** _

Now is also the hour that most channels stop showing programming and start playing infomercials.

The strangely energetic man on the telly is trying to convince John that he needs something that will let him _dice, chop, and mince in seconds!_

 **HR:** 90  
 **BP:** 158/84  
 **RR:** 12  
 **SpO2:** 97%

 

_**04:00** _

The telly is too making much noise. The voices are invading John’s head, grating around the insides of his skull. John presses the power button on the remote and makes it all disappear with a quick flash.

A cool stillness seeps over him. There is room to breathe now, he can think now, alone with the quiet and the sound of Sherlock’s breath filling his lungs.

 

_**04:10** _

But who shot Sherlock?

 

_**04:12** _

When Sherlock wakes up, he’ll tell John.

 

_**04:13** _

“Sherlock, wake up. Come on.”

“...Do it for me.”

 

_**04:14** _

Damn it all to hell.

John presses his fist to the space between his eyes.

 

 

_**04:24** _

**HR:** 98  
 **BP:** 128/78  
 **RR:** 16  
 **SpO2:** 98%

 **HR:** 104  
 **HR: 110**  
 **HR: 112**

That’s tachycardia. Technically. It’s not life threatening, not enough to set the alarm off - 120 is usually the threshold - but panic slices like a scalpel through the layers of John’s heart. “Nurse!” He practically upends the chair he’s been sitting on. “Doctor!”

He runs the short distance to the nurse’s station. “It’s Sherlock, it could be SVT, or he might be going into A-fib, early onset, he needs Amio--”

When they return, Sherlock’s vital signs read:

 **HR:** 96  
 **BP:** 128/78  
 **RR:** 16  
 **SpO2:** 98%

It’s just like Sherlock to show him up again, tease him for jumping to conclusions too soon on insubstantial evidence.

“He’s been stable all night,” says Jean-Louis. He’s not trying to be mean.

“I’m not crazy,” John snaps.

“No, of course you’re not,” Jean-Louis replies. “But I’m sure you know yourself, Dr. Watson, that the occasional fluctuation in heart rate is very normal, especially in patients in recovery. It’s a good thing you’re monitoring him so closely, however. We can worry the moment it’s sustained, or a pattern emerges.”

John wants to shout that of course he’s monitoring him, someone has to. He wants to yell that it is the first 24 hours after surgery that are critical, that if one does not catch arrhythmia early the chances for successful recovery are greatly diminished in the ICU patient and by the time that they notice it will be too late, Sherlock could _arrest_ \--

He takes in a deep breath and it isn’t until he suddenly feels the sting of nails cutting into his palm that he realises his hands are balled into tight fists.

He takes another breath and opens up his hand, flexing his fingers, one by one.

“Would you like a coffee, Dr. Watson?” Jean-Louis asks him, kindly. “We have a Keurig in the break room.”

“No,” says John, although he is suddenly tired. If not for the stress and tension that holds him up like steel wired through his spine he would crumple into a pile. He shakes his head. “Thank you.”

Jean-Louis pretends to adjust Sherlock’s IV although John has already set it to KVO. When he leaves John adjusts Sherlock’s sheet and blanket, his IV, his morphine drip, his nasal cannula, touching and fixing all the things that he can touch.

 

_**04:47** _

John fiddles with the settings on Sherlock’s monitor to turn the audio back on. The steady _beep…beep...beep…_ starts up in the background- each tone tracking the electrical activity of Sherlock’s heart, beating.

 

_**04:49** _

Carefully, he slides his fingers over Sherlock’s wrist, pressing three fingers down to feel the rhythmic bound of his pulse pushing back against him. His thumb circles around comfortably.

John breathes, in and out, slowly, feeling each beat of his heart, each rush of blood, in simultaneous rhythm with the tone of the monitor. He closes his eyes.

 

_**04:55** _

He’s not holding Sherlock’s hand.

He’s not.

 

 

_**05:20** _

“Sometimes I still see you on the pavement,” John says. His voice is hoarse and rough in the way that comes with sleeplessness. He presses his lips tight together, not liking the sound of it, and doesn’t say anything more.

They’ve never been all that good at talking to each other.

 

 

_**05:40** _

Sometimes John feels like he cannot contain himself, like there is this itching underneath his skin, this _something_ swelling, growing inside of him, clawing against the layers of his viscera, trying to get out.

He’s felt it more than ever this summer. In summertime in London the light bleeds on for so long, until 10, 11 o’clock at night. It makes it difficult to sleep even when he is exhausted, even curled up next to his wife in their marriage bed.

This twitchy sense of restlessness that fills him now is familiar. Feels the chair beneath him shake and realises that it is his hand that is shaking it, that his leg is tap-tap-tapping against it. He drums his fingers against the black plastic arm of it, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1234. Then he buries his face in his hands, tamping down a yell, fighting the constriction of his throat.

He’d gotten married in July. The wedding seems so far away now.

If he were at home he’d be up already anyway. Awake and alert, ready for anything in the quiet morning. For the sudden burst of gunfire or explosions, things that should never happen in his suburban life.

He looks up. Sherlock lies in the bed, still, still, _still_ stupidly unconscious to the world.

John wants to punch the wall. He could take the whole bloody wall down.

 

_**05:50** _

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. RR: 12.

He matches the pace of his breaths to Sherlock’s breathing, until he feels like a man of sense again.

 

_**06:05** _

He is looking at Sherlock’s mouth, at the gentle parting of his lips with breath. At the shape of Sherlock’s mouth.

_**06:15** _

Doesn’t know why he does that. He doesn’t really think about it. It’s weird. Quickly, he looks away.

 

_**06:30** _

The sun is rising over London in the cool morning. The colours are vivid, orange and pink, in the crisp autumn sky. It rises a little later every day now, as winter looms, quiet on the periphery.

It has been a very long time since John has watched a sunrise.

He gives Sherlock’s fingers a brief squeeze, checking for a response. Sherlock’s hand is warm in his.

 

_**07:00** _

Sherlock’s hair is a mess. John’s been thinking this for the past half hour. His fingers itch where they rest on the bedsheet.

Finally he huffs with irritation, reaching over to quickly finger-comb through dark curls, so that it looks somewhat all right again.

Sherlock would want to look presentable when he wakes up, after all.

Vain bastard.

 

_**07:28** _

There is movement outside the room. There is someone at the door. John’s hand flies to the gun in his pocket, fingers curling around it. The handle of it is cool in his hand and the weight of it fills him with a sense of surety like nothing else. He can feel his own breath picking up speed.

It’s a nurse - a female one - brown skin and bright red hair, a face that he hasn’t seen before. Of course. It must be shift change by now.

“Hello, hello! Just doing morning rounds,” she says, cheery in the way that some people are, the kind who end up murdered by their co-workers.

“Yes, of course,” John says, and he blinks rapidly.

His hand stays in his pocket for many minutes after she’s left the room.

 

_**08:00** _

His head is filled with the hollow, fuzzy feeling of sleep deprivation. It’s like his brain has been scraped out and white television static has been poured in its stead. He’s on his 27th hour of sleeplessness. His eyes feel dried-out, like the specimens kept in the jars back at Baker Street (are they still there?), rubbery and soaked in formaldehyde.

He takes Sherlock’s hand again; turns it over and over; drops it, completely limp and heavy on the bed.

Sherlock looks alien in the morning light; the way his features were always a bit bizarre, with his high cheekbones and elongated face, his ridiculous hair like a halo of darkness spilled upon the pillowcase.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” John says, and the urge to laugh bubbles up in him, barking and strange. He is suddenly filled with the certainty that Sherlock will never wake up, and this night will go on forever, even though the dawn has come, even though it is now tomorrow already, he has entered a twilight dimension where there is no difference in the day and the night anymore.

 

**_09:00_ **

There were moments, in the times before - before Mary, before Sherlock was alive again - in his less stable moments, when he used to think about Sherlock surviving the fall. Not ultimately, of course, because he couldn’t bear to bend the shape of reality that far. John has always been a realist. He has always thought of himself as a logical person. But there’s a situation that would have bought him a little more time, even if it all would have ended the same.

What if Sherlock had been comatose? What if he had made it to an operating table? What if John could have sat by his hospital bedside through all hours of the night and morning, given the chance to say goodbye? What would he have said?

Lack of sleep is making him maudlin.

“Sometimes you make me hate you,” John says quietly, and the voice doesn’t sound like him at all.

 

_**09:30** _

 

\--and then Sherlock wakes up.

Sherlock wakes up, stirring finally finally _finally_ under John’s watchful eye, and John clutches his hand and squeezes it too tight without thinking and Sherlock takes in a great big gulp of air like a man coming up from deep water and then Sherlock gasps, _“Mary!”_

Something sharp twists in John’s chest (why Mary?) but then Sherlock is awake and he is breathing and conscious and his eyes are muddled with morphine, pupils constricted with the opiate and more John feels like something is unfurling, unwinding inside of him and warmth spools out in golden threads throughout all his muscles, aching deep from how tightly they’d been tensed all night long.

“John,” Sherlock says when he notices him. Or he attempts to - his voice cracks at first and nothing comes out, and he frowns, and says it again two more times to get it right. He is extraordinarily pleased with himself when he does, saying, “John,” proudly, waiting for John’s praise. Sherlock is positively beaming, his expression open and happy; his voice is full of awe, as if John is the miracle here. He looks down at their joined hands as if he’s never seen a hand before, what could this strange thing possibly be?

“What’s this?” he indeed asks John, a second later.

“Of course,” says John, and he laughs and laughs, unable to help it. “Oh, you’re high as a kite.”

Sherlock smiles at him some more, nodding in pleasant agreement. “Right,” says Sherlock. “And you’re a very pretty lady,” he declares, which doesn’t even make any sense, but it makes John laugh anyway.

And then John realises that they’re grinning at each other like great big dopey idiots with their hands still folded together. Sherlock is higher than The Shard, but what excuse does he have? His cheeks warm, he tries to tug his hand away, but Sherlock pouts and makes whining upset noises when he does, so John lets it be, for the time being.

“Don’t leave. Ever,” Sherlock demands imperiously.

“I won’t, Sherlock, I won’t,” John promises; he ducks his head as he laughs.

Sherlock doesn’t need to see the ridiculous look on his face, with the bright morning sun hurting his eyes.


End file.
